Sioux Falls Drivers Behaving Badly – October 6, 2021
I have written a few different articles about the drivers of Sioux Falls. The culture of driving in this town, and much of this part of the country, is so broken. Full of anger and entitlement, drivers here are self-centered psychopaths when they get behind the wheel.
My hope in the past was always that a few people would read something I wrote, tell a friend, even if they thought it was stupid, discuss the asinine behavior, and learn from it. Those were delusions of grandeur I will not entertain anymore. From now on, I will just point and laugh at those who behave badly in traffic and write about them weekly.
Honking at a School Bus?
I was waiting for a green light at 57th on Southeastern Avenue on Tuesday when a school bus was turning left on a green arrow. The bus was not moving fast enough for an oncoming car that did not want to mess with moving their foot from the accelerator to the brake because the bus was not completely out of the intersection when they got there. Just before it blasted through the intersection at a minimum of the 35 mph speed limit, they mashed on their horn and did not miss the bus by more than 20 feet. I'm sure the bus was in a yellow arrow, but the light went green after the yellow. The little car just couldn't be bothered to slow down, I guess.
What Red Light?
On Sunday morning, while stopping to pick up a coffee on East 10th Street, I was slowing down to stop at the red light in front of Hy-Vee. A car turning to go east suddenly stopped in the intersection before they got halfway through. I started to chuckle at the randomness of it when a very small car zoomed by me in the right lane, running the red light in the most blatant fashion possible.
This Week's Winner "I Can't Pass the Left Turn Lane in the Oncoming Lane?"
On my lunch break today I was about to turn left into the Beakon Centre on Louise Avenue, following the line that marks where my left turn lane begins and the southbound double left turn lane on Louise to 57th begins. Just after I got into the left turn lane, an oncoming pickup truck started to enter the turning lane I was in. Confused as to where he was going, I looked right and saw there was no approach at that point to enter the business parking lots east of Louise Avenue. He just wanted to get in the left turn lane really early.
What came next blew my mind and caused me to laugh out loud. Instead of reentering his previous lane to go around me and then merge into the left turn lane, he went around me to my right, into the oncoming left lane, and then he merged to the right into the left turn lane. Read that line again.
"He merged right into the left turn lane."
If I asked ten people how one could merge right into a left turn lane, I bet I would get one or maybe two people who would guess this. It is so out of bounds in terms of the legal operation of a motor vehicle, most people could not even think of the mechanics of it. See the diagram below. I was the red block, the truck was the yellow block.
Ten Commandments of Sioux Falls